Is the Vertical as sub-standard as it seems?

BrunoH

@André-Faria I’m the one who brought up OLED in this thread. I think it was a reasonal assumption, considering the fact that Vertical’s marketing pics don’t boast with unrealistic colors. I think the images of Vertical (most colorful of them showing maps and sun&moon widget) were truthful and I think I received exactly what was advertised.

You’re right, no-one knows if he was raving about Vertical having especially bad MIP.

Jamie BG

@6294946
OHR - the reality as virtually all well known reviewers now point out is that your body comp, your skin tone, the amount of hair you have, any tats you have on your wrists, the fit and weight of the watch - this all goes towards how well any given OHR will read and provide accurate HR. So a device that works great for 98% of people will still have 2% where it doesn’t. Just go onto apple forums where apple OHR is generally rated as the best and you will find people complaining about it. Same with Garmin’s latest elevate 5 sensor which for most reviewers seems to do an excellent job.

If a sensor isn’t working for you in most situations - your best option is probably to try another watch if you don’t want to go chest strap or OHR bicep route. Its entirely possible that it may work for you - take 5k runner - that guy is notoriously bad when it comes to OHR - even had issues with apple OHR - but found the Epix one generally worked for him OK - but that OHR is a variety of other watches where he just didn’t get the same level of detail… You just can never tell.

Tieutieu

My Thoughts/vision about OHR and performances :

Many user of “smartwatches” are not athletes. As long as they see that OHRs give values, they probably are satisfied. So am I for daily and night HR tracking. I’m just interested into tendency.
When precise mesures are needed, as it has been said before, no one can decently rely on OHR of any brand. HR straps still remain the best way to train precisely, for now.

It will improve for sure (or another technology will replace OHR).

Elipsus

@Tieutieu The improvments are already there considering how much more reliable it became over the last 20 years compared to the first forerunners that had it.
And “The quantified Scientist” on Youtube already tested multiple watches (Namely Huawei GT3 &4 and Apple watches) that operate near perfectly even on strength training.

So, its just a matter of less than 5 years until other companies do it right IMO

ChrisA

@zhang965 said in Is the Vertical as sub-standard as it seems?:

You are not Suunto’s target audience, it’s all.

That’s exactly the point!

Suunto is trying to offer the same features as other brands, when it comes to health and recovery features, but that’s not one of their top priorities. Maybe this will change with giving up the old firstbeat algorithms in the near future.

Jamie BG

sorry - for some reason this was a delayed duplicate post - and as I can’t delete - have edited it out.

6294946

@Jamie-BG I think this is just a bit too convenient to say that whoever is complaining is just one of the unlucky 2 percent. What we would want to know is whether that rate is actually higher than 2 percent for suunto vertical than for other watches in 2023. My subjective reading is that for suunto vertical that number might be higher but of course it is very hard to say without having some systematic data. Obviously those who complain are going to be more active on the internets, but it is very different for apple watch which has millions of users and thus 2 percent leads to a lot of complaints vs suunto vertical which has much less users but still a lot of people raising the issue on this forum.

dombo

@6294946 I would say it is more complicated. I had lot of issues with my vertical when I bought it. I went directly to my training/holiday camp to mountains and was trying all features of the watch. Disaster, unusable,… Then I gave up on using suunto for biking and bought karoo bike computer. I still use basic features of the watch, using it on bike as backup recording device (imho very expensive backup), with navigation and maps just occasionally. no problem with watch lately. so as conclusion: more you use your watch, more problem you have.

isazi

@dombo I use my Vertical every day for sport, with S+ apps, guides, maps, and so on. I have used it for around 195 hours and just shy of 1500 kilometers. Zero issues, just one single crash while commuting to work. So, there are people using their watch a lot and not having issues

v.sacre

Same for me @isazi. At this point, nothing bad happened to my vertical.
I guess it is the case for most of the people.
But we tend to speak and remember only bad experience.

e6321

Not sure about display, I find it very readable. As far as MIP displays go I think its about as good as it gets.

Sleep tracking is useless, step tracking is useless, spo2 is useless and arguably ohr is aswell. Annoying but hey you dont buy a suunto for these (cue argument about why Suunto bothers)

Hardware wise I think the watch is great. GPS is the best ive seen (minus a few suspected software issues)
Barometer as far as I can tell so far is spot on, which is surprisingly difficult to find these days. Garmins is certainly subpar.

Software is lackluster and quite disappointed with Suunto slow update rate. Widgets really could do with being sped up and the fatal bugs really do need addressing.
Theyve been releasing buggy watches since the first ambit so don’t excuse this with the “software takes time to test” nonsense.

larrybbaker

@isazi I am in the same boat. The watch has performed flawlessly for me. One map/routing crash before the last update. Daily use. OHR very close to chest strap HR (Polar H10) if I position it on the wrist correctly. Sleep tracking fairly accurate as far as hours slept. SpO2 is correlated with what I get from my AW8.

This is my 5th Suunto and I have had only minor issues with any of them - most occurring around the transition from Movescount when SA was new.

altcmd

@larrybbaker good to hear. I don’t really care about OHR as I prefer to wear the Verity Sense or H10. Workouts have been fine but the interval Guides is a mess to be honest. I guess it helps Suunto tick a box but I sincerely hope this is improved. Navigation on maps continue to be a mess if using turn-by-turn. Still no swim drills. Interface very laggy and rather restrictive in many sense. These individually are small but stacking them all up makes me sad, but then this has been Suunto’s story ever since the demise of Movescount. Good if they can improve things but history says otherwise.

stromdiddily

@altcmd What’s the issue with t2t nav and the maps?

Brad_Olwin

@stromdiddily said in Is the Vertical as sub-standard as it seems?:

@altcmd What’s the issue with t2t nav and the maps?

I guess I would add what is a mess about Interval Guides? Which 3rd party are you using?

The screen lag issue I don’t get, what is the lag problem? I push the button and the screen changes. Is it instantaneous? no, neither is a screen switch instantaneous on my Apple Watch Ultra or on the Garmin Epix2 I owned. I guess I cannot tell the difference between these. When I open an app on my iPhone it is not instantaneous either. So far this has not caused me any harm.

altcmd

@Brad_Olwin and @stromdiddily
Guides: perhaps a personal preference but the TP guide target numbers do not show a range but the average point. And if doing a HR interval that is a narrow cross between zones, it is sometimes hard to discern the range one wants to keep. Of course I can remember then but that defeats the purpose of a Suunto guide let alone the watch. Out of range beeps or vibration is also missing.

TbT: discussed at length before so will no repeat again. Great if it works for you but I do not believe the navigation prompts Suunto gives is standard and as per what everyone else does on their watches.

Lags: my comparison is not to anyone but since you brought it up, I too have used a few Garmins in the last few years (7, 7S, 955) and the screen hiccups were not so noticeable as they are in Suunto. Again, I don’t care what others do here, but there is a noticeable lag on the vertical that was also the case on 9PP. Of course it does no ‘harm’ but just because Apple isn’t doing split second screen changes does not mean Suunto is in the clear. It’s a bit absurd if, not for the first time, some people have raised the issue and the response is a bit dismissive. Don’t worry, this isnt life threatening

Alarm, constant altimeter/compass calibrations, etc. but no point adding it on.

e6321

@altcmd the screen lags are particularly annoying. For checking things like altimeter or barometer, Its shouldn’t be a 7 second task of choppy scrolling through widgets.

Egika

@e6321 said in Is the Vertical as sub-standard as it seems?:

For checking things like altimeter or barometer, Its shouldn’t be a 7 second task of choppy scrolling through widgets.